My mother, God bless her Irish soul, hailed from a small village in County Leitrim up there in the north of Eire. She was just a slip of a girl when she came over to England during the War to work in service at Mentmore Towers, Lord Rosebery’s vast former pile in Buckinghamshire. Not long after that, she moved up to Dalmeny House, Rosebery’s stately home in Scotland. The Dalmeny estate lies on the southern shore of the River Forth along the road from South Queensferry, where Mum met and married my father and had seven children, six of whom are alive and kicking today. But that’s a whole other story, which you can read in The Bookie’s Runner, my little biography of my Dad.Back to Mum, then. When we children were growing up, she often spoke to us about her father – our grandfather, Patrick. Her reports of the man were conflicting, to say the least. Most of the time, she referred to him as “a useless, ould drunk”. She blamed him for her mother taking ill and being put in a sanatorium. And she blamed him for the subsequent break-up of her family, with her brothers and sisters being split up and farmed out to be brought up by aunts and uncles. She had no time at all for the man.But there were other occasions when she spoke proudly of her father as a war hero. He joined the Irish Republican Army when he was still a boy, she said. He fought in Ireland’s War of Independence. He was a lieutenant colonel. He was Michael Collins’ right-hand man. He was captured and tortured by the Black and Tans. They pulled out his fingernails, wrapped a Union Jack around him and paraded him through his own village. The poor man never recovered from the humiliation and took to the drink.Now, the thing about Mum is that she was a bit of a romantic, with a lot of fanciful notions about our lineage. We were descended from Brian Boru, from the Kings of Ireland, she told us. We were also descendants of the Black Irish and had Spanish blood running in our veins. And our father – well, he was descended from a long line of Norwegian sailors. Where Mum was concerned, we could never just be ordinary.As we grew up, we learned to treat Mum’s claims with a pinch of salt. There may have been a sliver of truth in some of them, but by and large we saw them as embellishments. And such was the case with her claims about our grandfather’s war hero status. Yes, in all likelihood Patrick was a member of the IRA and had a minor role in the War of Independence, but that was about it. Well, it was until some recent revelations.My older sister is what you might call our family archivist. Her research into Mum’s family tree over in Ireland brought her into contact with a cousin, who supplied her with a whole wad of official papers about Patrick. Among the papers was a copy of Patrick’s application back in the 1950’s for a Military Service Medal and Pension. (He was awarded both, by the way. The photo at the top of this article is what the medal would have looked like.) It’s in the detail of that application form where the revelations lie.It seems that the seventeen-year-old who joined the IRA in 1917 quickly developed into a key figure in his local Unit. He was a messenger. He was a drill instructor and an arms instructor. He looked after the Unit’s guns and ammunition and explosives. A quartermaster in all but name, he may well have held the rank of lieutenant colonel. And he was present during every military operation by the Unit.But what about Patrick’s alleged connection to Michael Collins? A closer examination of the records shows that for much of the war Collins was very active in North Longford, the very area in which Patrick operated. In fact, Collins’ base when he was in the area, the Longford Arms in Granard, was a short distance from Patrick’s own village. It’s highly likely, therefore, that the two men knew each other. But the Big Fella’s right-hand man? Probably not, but a close comrade at least.And there’s more. On one of her visits to Ireland, my sister met with Mum’s last remaining sibling, our Uncle Mick. He told her that Patrick was “good with his hands” and had apparently built his own motorcycle when he was a lad. He also mentioned a book he had read many years before, a biography of Michael Collins, in which he remembered seeing an entry that stated: LANE, PADRAIG LT COL IRA. Our grandfather! (Sadly, Mick passed away shortly after that conversation.)So Mum may not have been embellishing Patrick’s story after all. If his role in the IRA, his rank and his connection with Michael Collins were all as she had claimed, then her account of his capture and torture by the Black and Tans was also likely to be true. He may not have been a good husband and father, but it certainly appears that he was one of his country’s heroes.Because of our scepticism over Mum’s claims, Patrick has for long been a much maligned man in the eyes of his grandchildren in Scotland. It’s time to rectify that. It’s time to rehabilitate our grandfather. I hope I’ve begun the process of rehabilitation with my story, The Patriot Game. It’s a semi-fictional account of Patrick’s life – semi-fictional, because there are still huge gaps in our knowledge of the man, gaps that may never be filled.If you didn’t know already, this year marks the centenary of Ireland’s Easter Rising of 1916. Over the coming Easter weekend, the Rising will be commemorated in celebrations not only across Eire, but throughout the world. The Patriot Game is my personal way of commemorating the Rising, the brutal quelling of which led Patrick and many other young men across Ireland to take up arms against the British Army.Erin go Bragh, Patrick!

I can tell that the title of this piece and the accompanying picture are worrying you. Let me reassure you then. I’m not some mincing-arsed thespian ready to witter on about the days I spent treading the boards. You won’t catch me quoting things like Alas, poor Yorick! Never met the guy. And who the feck’s Horatio?

No, I’m here to write about another Hamlet. A cat called Hamlet, in fact. My cat from years long gone. Aye, right, I can see you jumping about like a twat with a big grin on your face, already composing my epitaph: Here lies Gisby, the pussy who kept a pussy. Aye, very funny.

Anyway, the cat – or kitten, as he was then – was a gift from one of my wee sisters. “A bit of company for you,” she had said, which was a nice thought. He was a scrawny wee thing with jet black fur and a white patch running down his muzzle and chest. I came into possession of him one Saturday afternoon in the middle of winter. I was twenty-one at the time and living in the basement of a converted Victorian townhouse on Newhaven Road in Edinburgh. Access to the basement – or garden flat, as the posh folk in neighbouring Trinity would have called it – was from along a narrow, unlit lane at the rear of the house and then down through the steeply sloping garden, which was also unlit. Getting home at night when I was drunk was a nightmare! But, hey, that’s how I rolled back in the day.

Saturday night came along and, kitten or not, this young Turk was off up the town to pose with the other posers in the poser bars along Thistle Street and Rose Street. Before I went out, I made sure the tiny bundle of fur was warm and cosy in the shoebox he came in, and I put down a saucer of milk beside the box, together with the litter tray my sister had also supplied. I even left the convector heater on. It was a strange sensation for me, but as that night wore on my thoughts kept returning to my new flatmate, so much so that I declined the opportunity to go to a party and returned home early instead to check on the kitten, which I had already decided to call Hamlet. If you know me, you’ll be aware of my literary pretensions; I was no different at that age.

Well, my scruffy wee buddy seemed to grow into a sleek, independent adult in no time at all. He was still on the small side and still a bit skinny, but he quickly lost that scrawny look. I kept one of the sash windows in the living room permanently open at the bottom so that he could come and go when he pleased. And I instructed him in the business of doing his business outside. I even showed him the best place in the garden to keep his doings hidden from the other tenants of the house.

To be honest, I didn’t see much of Hamlet after that. He didn’t hang about the flat. He came in to eat the food I put out for him. And at some point in the middle of every night, he crept into my bedroom and, purring loudly, made himself comfortable at the side of my pillow. I suppose that was company enough for me.

Like all outdoor cats, Hamlet was a hunter. Often when I returned from work in the evening, one of his little gifts – a poor wee sparrow, usually, or a dormouse – would be waiting for me on the doorstep. On one occasion, though, the gift was a live one. I came home to find the living room floor covered in a fine layer of feathers and birdshit. And cowering in a corner of the room was a completely featherless blackbird. It looked like Hamlet had spent hours toying with his victim. I wasn’t best pleased, of course. Not only did I have to clean the living room, I also had to strangle and bury the unfortunate blackbird. While I was doing the latter, the culprit sat on a wall watching me and looking very pleased with himself.

I don’t know if it was as a consequence of living with me and my Irish temper, but Hamlet was also the most highly strung cat you’ll ever come across. He was especially nervous when it came to visitors to the flat. We had a visitor on one memorable Saturday morning. The tenant of the top flat of the house came down through the garden and knocked at my door. She was a tall, horse-faced, posh lady. And she was very, very loud. Hamlet happened to be in the flat at that moment. He had just finished eating in the kitchen and was on his way to the window to go back outside. “Cooee!” the lady called out, and I swear the building shook. Hamlet stopped dead, sheer panic in his eyes. As I went to answer the door, I saw him scurry towards the window, halt suddenly, then begin to retreat to the kitchen, only to halt again. He must have felt completely trapped, so he took the only avenue left to him and disappeared up the chimney.

The lady from upstairs had come to deliver some post she had kindly taken in for me. After she left, I went looking for Hamlet. Although the fireplace hadn’t been used for many years, the walls of the chimney were still soot-laden. When I shouted up into the blackness, Hamlet answered with some pathetic mewing. He seemed to have wedged his body into the little shelf just behind the chimney damper; he really was trapped this time. So I hurried to the kitchen, rolled up my sleeves and filled the big sink with warm, soapy water. Then I returned to the living room, stuck an arm up the chimney, grabbed hold of Hamlet and hauled him down, soot and all. Naturally ungrateful for having been rescued, Hamlet squirmed, hissed and clawed while I held him with both hands by the scruff of the neck and ran back to the kitchen, where I dumped his writhing body into the sink. He may have looked like nothing but a bedraggled skeleton, but that wee cat was as strong as an ox. It took all my strength to keep him in the water and make sure he was thoroughly washed. Because I eased up a fraction when I tried to dry him, he managed to squirm from my grasp, whereupon he shot away and, still drookit, escaped out the window, not to be seen or heard again for the best part of a week. Talk about a huff, man!

That little contretemps aside, Hamlet and I co-existed amicably enough for a while. That was until our peaceful, shared bachelor life was shattered by the appearance on the scene of a girlfriend, who would soon be my first wife, Ann. Nor was it long before the three of us were saying goodbye to salty old Newhaven and hello to the douce streets of Edinburgh’s West End. We moved into another rented flat, this time a mews flat in a courtyard at the rear of opulent Clarendon Crescent. It was a bit of a struggle moving Hamlet to his new home, the cardboard cat carrier in which we transported him having been almost beaten into submission by the time we got there, but he soon settled in, coming and going as he pleased, as in Newhaven, but now circulating in a decidedly more upmarket feline community.

Hamlet’s absences at that time usually lasted no longer than a day. He always turned up sooner or later, looking for food and perhaps a sleep. On one occasion, though, the absence stretched into days and then into weeks. I went out to search for him one night early on in that period. I figured the most likely place to find him was up a narrow lane that led from the mews courtyard to the entrances to the rear walled gardens of the big houses on Clarendon Crescent and adjoining Eton Terrace. As I walked up the dark lane calling out for Hamlet, sure enough I could make out the silhouettes of cats of all sorts ranged along the top of the wall on each side of the lane. And I could hear them hissing and growling as I passed. I have to admit it was an unnerving experience. I remember thinking that, being Edinburgh, this must be the cat equivalent of Jekyll and Hyde, with fluffy, cuddly moggies by day transformed into marauding, murderous beasts by night. (I told you I had literary pretensions!) I also thought our wee Hamlet had to be a pretty tough cookie to survive in such a hostile environment.

There was no sign of Hamlet that night, of course, nor was there any sign of him for many nights to come. Eventually and reluctantly, we accepted that he wouldn’t be returning, that he was probably dead. Then one morning when I opened the front door, he slid past me with a cursory miaow and awkwardly climbed the winding stairs up to the flat. He was emaciated, and I noticed that one of his hind legs was held up from the ground. I also noticed later on that the claws on all four of his paws had been worn down almost to the bone. I’ll never know what happened to him during the best part of three weeks, but I suspect that he had been trapped somewhere up high and had escaped by jumping and sliding – down the side of a building, perhaps. Whatever, his injured hind leg was a cause for concern, so we decided to take him to the vets. And so evolved another Hamlet misadventure.

One evening after work, Ann and I set off for the PDSA in Stockbridge, which was about a ten-minute walk away. Stupidly, I put Hamlet in the same battered cardboard cat carrier we had used to ferry him from Newhaven. I reckoned that with his injury he wouldn’t be able to do much more damage to the carrier. I reckoned wrong. He was quiet enough going down to the vets. But two broken needles, an injection and an exhausted young vet later, he began to create merry hell on the way back up the road. It also began to rain. Heavily. The carrier was soaked before we had the chance to take shelter. Then Hamlet’s head burst through the soggy cardboard. (Aye, that’s right, smartarse, just like in that scene from Alien.) A second later and his whole body was out of the carrier there in the middle of Stockbridge. And he was off, sprinting – on all four legs, by the way – through the rain and the pedestrians and the traffic in the direction of Dean Gardens. That, I suppose, was when his reign as King of Dean Gardens commenced.

If you don’t know them, Dean Gardens can be found on the western bank of the deep valley where the Water of Leith flows under Dean Bridge. They are not really gardens; more a case of a steep, bush- and tree-covered slope with a path running through the middle of it. The gardens are also private, only accessible to local residents who are key-holders, which we happened to be. After his escape in Stockbridge, Hamlet still visited the mews flat regularly, but we had no idea where he spent the rest of the time. We were to find out one sunny autumn afternoon as we strolled through the gardens. On the path up ahead of us, an elderly gentleman, an ex-military type with a walking stick, was out with his equally elderly spaniel. Suddenly, Hamlet sprang from nowhere, back arched, spitting at the spaniel. The poor old dog cowered and whimpered behind his master, who responded by brandishing his stick at the cat. Then Hamlet disappeared back into the bushes. Having witnessed the ambush, we were still standing, mouths agape, when an awful noise came from the slope to our left. It was the bold Hamlet crashing down through the thick carpet of leaves to meet us and miaowing loudly, as if to say, “Welcome to my home. What the fuck took you so long?”

A few days after that incident, the King of Dean Gardens decided he would make a habit of seeing us off to work in the morning. Both Ann and I worked for the same company, so we left the flat at the same time to walk up the road and across Dean Bridge into the city centre. Hamlet would emerge from the gardens just as we reached Dean Bridge. He would leap up to the narrow parapet and walk along it, accompanying us to the middle of the bridge. He always stopped at the midpoint, as if that were the edge of his territory. No amount of shooing would stop him from carrying out this routine. Ignoring him had no effect either. Those were heart-stopping moments we endured every morning, I can tell you. One slip or a wee push or even a strong gust of wind, and the daft cat would have plummeted more than a hundred feet into the Water of Leith!

And one day we discovered that the daft cat was up to other shenanigans. We were walking home from work when we were accosted by a local resident, a woman whose voice could have cut glass. She wanted to know if we were the owners of a little black and white cat. Why? Because, she said, “That cat came through the window into our drawing room last night and proceeded to beat up our poor Toto. Then, if you please, it left the same way – swaggering, if you don’t mind. The cheek of it!” We apologised to the woman, of course, but internally I couldn’t help laughing that my wee mongrel was going about conducting his own version of a class war.

But we were soon on the move again. The rich bitch daughter of the owner of the mews flat had secured a place at Edinburgh University and would be coming from England to take up residency of the flat for the duration of her studies. So we had to find alternative accommodation, which we did, a second-floor flat in a tenement in the much less salubrious Abbeyhill area. While the street in which we lived wasn’t much to look at, the flat itself was fine, with an unrestricted view from the main bedroom of the mighty Arthur’s Seat presiding over the lush expanse of Holyrood Park.

In advance of the move to Abbeyhill, we took extra precautions regarding Hamlet. A couple of days beforehand, when he visited us to feed, we made sure he couldn’t leave again, no matter how long or loudly he protested. We bought a stronger cat carrier. And through a friend of a friend of a vet we procured a horse tranquiliser tablet – I kid you not! On the morning of the move, I ground down half the tablet and mixed the powder in Hamlet’s food, which he ate without suspicion. I remember watching him afterwards. One moment his eyes were closing and his head was drooping; the next he was sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide open, fighting the drug with all his might. He reminded me of the first time I smoked a joint, convincing myself that it wouldn’t have any effect and that Fleetwood Mac’s Albatross wasn’t really playing at top volume in my head. But, like me with the weed, Hamlet finally succumbed and we stowed his unconscious form in the cat carrier.

Once he was settled in Abbeyhill, Hamlet quickly resumed his semi-feral existence, with the whole of Holyrood Park as his hunting ground instead of leafy Dean Gardens. I have one indelible memory of his time there. I got up one morning and, as I usually did, pulled back the bedroom curtain to see what the weather looked like. There was a very heavy mist. Arthur’s Seat couldn’t be seen. Nor the park. Nor even the drying green below the window. But suddenly the mist over the drying green cleared a little, and I could make out an extremely large white rabbit running in a circle – in slow motion, it seemed – and being chased, also in slow motion, by – yes, you’ve guessed it – oor wee Hamlet. Pretty sure that I was half-awake and seeing things, I closed the curtain and opened it again. The two animals were still down there, still galloping round and round in slow motion, but this time the rabbit was chasing Hamlet. Then the mist came back and I lost sight of them. Even today, some forty years later, that spectacle of Hamlet and the white rabbit stands as one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.

But Hamlet’s tale is now drawing to a close. The offer of a flat in Ann’s hometown of Burntisland in Fife ended our sojourn in Abbeyhill. After taking up the offer, we moved once more, to a bigger flat still in Burntisland. It only occurs to me now that all those moves since Newhaven must have taken a toll on Hamlet. With each new territory he was forced into, he would have had to fight to assert himself. After the last move in Burntisland, he certainly seemed to have tired of the outdoor life and spent much more time in the flat. There again, that may have had a lot to do with the pair of lovebirds in the cage hanging from our living room ceiling. Hamlet spent many hours gazing up at those birds, dreaming, willing the plastic tray at the bottom of the cage to fall out. Which it did one day. Luckily, I was there at the time. The two birds flew out of the cage, one of them straight into Hamlet’s mouth. Off went Hamlet. Off I went after him, rescuing his unexpected prize and returning it, apparently unharmed, to the cage. The tray was taped securely after that.

Shortly after that incident, Ann gave birth to our first child, a son. And round about the same time, Hamlet was found to be suffering from cat mange. Mange, if you don’t know, is a severe skin disease which compels cats to constantly lick their fur, creating large bald patches and sores which crust over and scab. Unless the disease is caught early, the sufferers can literally lick themselves to death. Whether Hamlet contracted mange from a posh cat round Edinburgh’s West End or from another mongrel in Abbeyhill or Burntisland, the disease had gone too far by the time we took him to the vet, who advised us that he should be put out of his misery. I prevaricated, of course, but Ann was much more decisive. The thought of her wee boy crawling on the carpet and picking up a scab that had dropped from the cat… well, it didn’t bear thinking about. One morning when I was away at work, she returned to the vet with Hamlet. The last of his nine lives came to an end.

I don’t know why I decided to write about Hamlet. I do miss him. And I think about him from time to time. For a while in my life, he was a good companion, my wee buddy, streetwise, tough, sometimes uncompromising, but always, always loyal. Perhaps a bit like me.

Contrary to what I said at the beginning, I’ll finish by quoting from Hamlet. The play, not the cat, stupid. It’s that Horatio guy again.

Why do you write? It’s probably the most boring question asked in those insufferable author interviews that are posted every other day on the blogs of fellow-authors. Boring or not, though, it’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately – and it’s the subject of this post.

I suppose my answer currently is that I write in order to achieve some sort of catharsis. Those who know me will also know that my soulmate and muse of twenty-five years passed away recently. I found myself constantly reliving the horrible events surrounding her passing. I wasn’t grieving properly. I wasn’t moving on. So I set down my feelings in writing in a short story called Man Up, which you’ll find on this site. Both the act of writing that story and the story itself gave me some release. I’m moving on now.

I’ve been there before, searching for release from the memory of awful events in my past. Some years ago, I was recovering from the effects of a near-fatal stroke. But it wasn’t just my body that needed to mend; my mind was also out of kilter. Every night, my brain had me replaying, in minute detail, the tragic circumstances that led to my father’s untimely death when I was a teenager. I couldn’t get those details out of my head. I wasn’t sleeping properly. So I wrote my father’s story in a novella called The Bookie’s Runner, which you may have heard of. Its publication laid some ghosts to rest and helped me sleep better.

I’m still trying to exorcise the memory of other awful events, the ones that led to that catastrophic stroke. I’ve been writing a novel, The Percentages Men, about those events. I’ve blogged about the progress of the novel here before, most recently in a post called Best Served Cold. It’s taking me a long time to put it together (30,000+ words to date), but I am finding that the process of describing the people involved and their antics is laying some more ghosts to rest.

So an awful lot of cathartic writing so far. However, there was a time before all that when I actually wrote for a living. No, not as an “author” – that only happened post-stroke, post-retiral – but as a businessman. You see, the business was research and its primary product was a research report. And a good research report had to set out facts and opinions and conclusions not only clearly, concisely and jargon-free, but also in an interesting way, a way that held the reader’s attention. Even if I do say so myself, I was rather good at it. I enjoyed it, that’s for sure.

And there was a time even before then – well, long before then – when I had to write to keep myself from going to jail. Or at least I thought that was case. The memory of that particular incident was what prompted this post.

It was 1973. I was twenty-three, not long married to my first wife, Ann, and living in a rented second-floor flat in a street full of tenements in the Abbeyhill area of Edinburgh. The narrow street was lined on both sides with tenements so that it resembled a dark canyon. In stark contrast, the back of our building had an unspoiled view of the lushness of Holyrood Park and the majesty of Arthur’s Seat. At weekends, Ann and I were often to be found walking in the park and sometimes climbing to the top of Arthur’s Seat. And that’s just what we had done on the bracing, windy Sunday afternoon in question.

After we had returned to the flat, I sat down in an armchair and dozed off. I was tired – happy-tired, I think you would call it. But my nap wasn’t to last more than a couple of minutes. I was awakened by the harsh jangle of the bell in the hallway. The little brass bell was the original from when the tenement was built in the late nineteenth century. So was the brass bellpull on the outside wall at the foot of the building. So were the wires that ran the length of the stair and connected the bellpull to the bell in our flat. And, of course, they were all in perfect working order.

If we had been smart, we would have disconnected the bell months before. But we weren’t. We were young and stubborn. You see, we refused to give in to the bunch of young lads who regularly rang the bell from the street before running off and hiding. The lads – three, sometimes four, sixteen and seventeen year-olds – lived on the same street. When we moved in, we discovered that at night they were congregating on the landing below ours, smoking and playing cards and generally “hanging out”, as the Yanks would say. My first task, therefore, was to chase them off and suggest they loiter in their own stairs. They went and didn’t return. The bellpulling was their revenge.

Usually, we ignored the bellpulling. We knew who the culprits were. And we knew they would be well out of sight by the time we reached the bottom of the stair. But on that particular Sunday I couldn’t ignore it. I was angry – Black Irish angry. I had been woken rudely from an enjoyable slumber. The peace of the afternoon had been shattered. But more than that: our privacy, our space, had been invaded.

So off I went. Down the stairs. Out into the deserted street. I walked up to the next stair and looked in. Nobody. The same with the stair after that. They were in the third stair, three of them sprawled across the first landing, smoking and laughing and joking.

“Isn’t it about time you guys grew up, eh?” I shouted as I climbed the steps up to them. “Leave the fucking bell alone, eh? Or I promise you’ll be sorry.”

There were no denials – no sounds, in fact. I stared at them for a few moments longer before turning and heading down the steps. That was when it dawned on me. One of them, the one in the middle – I forget his name, but let’s call him Geordie – had been smirking at me. The smirk told me that nothing was going to change. The bellpulling would continue. So I turned back and wiped the smirk off Geordie’s face with a right hook to his nose.

Then all hell broke loose. While I moved in closer to Geordie to prevent him from retaliating, his two companions leapt on my back and began to punch and kick me. Ignoring their blows, I grabbed hold of Geordie’s hair and tried to do as much damage to him as I could. But I knew that the three of them together were getting the better of me. It was Ann’s intervention that saved me. Her angry shouts reverberated throughout the stair and seemed to bring us all to our senses.

She took hold of my arm and pulled me out into the street, where we were confronted by Geordie’s father. He was a bus driver, a portly, loudmouthed, belligerent man whose voice could often be heard echoing across the tenemental canyon.

“I’m getting the Polis on you, boy,” he screamed in my face. “You should pick on someone your own age. You’re nothing but a bully.”

A bully? I remember saying to myself. There’s three of them. And every one of them is at least six inches taller than me. A fucking bully?

I was beginning to lose it again. But thankfully Ann dragged me away before I could say or do anything.

As soon as we returned to the flat, the adrenalin overwhelmed me and I erupted in tears. When I went to the bathroom to wash my face, I found that I was still clutching a clump of Geordie’s hair.

Not long afterwards, two policemen came to the door. They were both young and considerate – and apologetic. They were sorry, but they would have to charge me with assault, which one of them duly did. The same policeman explained that I would receive a citation to appear at the Police Court to answer the charge.

“My advice is to plead guilty,” he said. “You really don’t have a leg to stand on. You’ll probably just be fined. And that should be an end to it.

“When you receive the citation,” he added, “my advice as well is to write a letter to the court. That way you’ll be able to explain any mitigating circumstances. A letter usually helps.”

I did as he suggested, taking considerable time to compose the letter before I submitted it to the court. You’ll probably just be fined, the policeman had said. But as the date of the court appearance grew nearer, I became increasingly nervous. By the time Ann and I arrived at the Police Court in Torphichen Place on the appointed Monday morning, I had convinced myself that I would be spending at least the next month in a prison cell. I had even nipped into Boots on the way there and bought a new toothbrush.

Walking into the Police Court was like stepping back in time. The dark oak-panelled room probably hadn’t changed in the best part of a hundred years. It was arranged more like a lecture theatre than a court, with defendants and spectators seated alongside each other in tiers that led down to a sort of pit, over which towered a large bench occupied by a single Magistrate with the powers to both fine and imprison. When their cases were being heard, defendants were required to stand in the pit and address the Magistrate.

As Ann and I were taking our seats, I caught sight of Geordie further up the room. One of his arms was in a sling, there was a strip of Elastoplast across the bridge of his nose and he was sporting a neat, round bald patch in the centre of his crown. All dressed up in a suit and shirt and tie, he was seated between his mother and his obnoxious father. It seemed that Mister Bus Driver had taken time off his work to witness justice being dispensed on his son’s behalf.

If I hadn’t been so nervous, I might have enjoyed the entertainment offered by the court. The first cases heard concerned those wo had been held over the weekend in the police cells below the court. There was a procession of very rough-looking prostitutes, who all pled guilty to soliciting and trooped off to pay their fines. There was a succession of young men who had been arrested variously for drunk and disorderly conduct, fighting and thieving. They also all pled guilty and left to pay their fines. Then it was my turn.

I have to admit I was terrified as I stood in the pit, my legs shaking. The Magistrate read out the charge and asked me how I pled.

“Guilty,” I answered in a small voice.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?” he barked.

“I-I s-sent in a l-letter…” I stuttered.

He thumbed through the file in front of him and found my letter. From the expression on his big red face when he began to read it, I knew I was on a winner. Here at last, he must have thought, is someone who can string more than two words together.

When he finished reading the two-page letter, he peered down at me over the top of his spectacles.

“Well, have you learned your lesson, then?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“I certainly hope so. Stay out of trouble and next time call the Police.”

The he returned the letter to his file and added in a louder voice, "Admonished."

My heart sang. “Thank you, sir,” I said, also in a louder voice.

As I left the pit to find Ann, it was my turn to smirk at Geordie. I gave both him and his fat father the biggest, most full-frontal smirk I could muster.

And that letter? Well, like I said, I spent some time writing it. I couldn’t reproduce it today, but I do know I explained in it that the bell ringing was only a small part of the problem. The main problem was the harassment of my wee, frail, defenceless wife by the gang of youths. For months, they had been harassing her at every opportunity – when she returned from work, when she left the flat to go to the shops. It had gotten so that she wouldn’t venture into the street without me accompanying her. So when they rang the bell on that Sunday afternoon, it was the last straw for me and I just snapped. I said I realised now that it was wrong to take the law into my own hands. I also apologised for my actions and promised they would never recur.

Yes, it was a case of weaving truth with fiction. Ann was wee, all right, but she was neither frail nor defenceless. Apart from the bellpulling, there hadn’t been much harassment to speak of. And as for Ann being scared to go out on her own, not a chance!

So the letter was my very first piece of semi-fictional writing – and it had impressed. It wasn’t long before I had embarked on writing a full novel, a futuristic Cold War thriller that imagined a Sino-Soviet invasion of Western Europe in 1980. It was called The Olive Branch. But that, as they say, is another story.

It’s only to be expected, I suppose, but as you grow older memories come unbidden to you on a regular basis. You suddenly remember incidents from twenty, thirty, forty, even fifty years ago. They are random fragments of your life; little snatches of the past. And, of course, the older you grow, the more frequent their appearance.

I know all this because I’m officially ancient now, having just turned sixty-five, and because I’m being interrupted by those memories at an increasing rate. I also know that when they materialise most normal people are likely to smile at the memories if they’re happy or funny ones, or wince if not, and then move on with their lives. But not so this writer. I smile or wince, all right, but I find I can’t move on until I’ve recorded the memory, until I’ve captured it in a story. Each memory halts progress on The Great Scottish Novel. It becomes an itch I have to scratch.

I’ve been scratching those itches for a fair while now and I’ve built up a stack of wee stories as a result. You'll find them all on this site. Here’s a sentence or two about each of them:

No’ on a Friday recounts an incident during my first proper office job when I was nineteen. There’s a bizarre image in it that I’ve never been able to shake off.

Fast-forward twenty years or so to Summoned to The Tower, when I really did have an important appointment at The Tower of London.

Recalling a 1990 visit to Eire, Irish Riddles was prompted by the outcome of the Scottish Independence Referendum last year.

Goaded By Nuns takes place round about the same time and relates the peculiar circumstances in which I made a very good friend.

In Red Leather Slippers, I’m fifteen again and being chucked in at the deep end by my Irish rebel mother.

I’m about the same age in Rules of Engagement, in which I’m a witness to the gallus outcome of a square go.

Made in Ireland recreates an incident from the 1970’s in the home of my former in-laws. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Finally (for the moment, at least), I’m a twelve year-old in Dux and learning for the first time the destructive power of the clique.

If I accumulate any more stories like them, I might publish them all in an anthology, called perhaps The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Either that or I’ll go out and buy some anti-itching lotion.

Anyway, back to The Great Scottish Novel until the next interruption from the past.

You know that Frank Sinatra song called It Was A Very Good Year? It begins with the line When I was seventeen, it was a very good year? You’re bound to have heard it one time or another. Well, I have to confess it used to be my party piece. After a few drinks at any gathering, big or small, but especially when there was a birthday to celebrate, Gisby was up there crooning the song, with or without a microphone.I even invented a chorus for the song. It was something I once heard Marsha Hunt sing. The words went:I can recall/The thrill of it all/Though it were yesterdaySo I would have my audience first rehearsing the chorus until they got it right and then singing it sotto voce at the end of each verse. From a small group of colleagues to the clientele of a large Chinese restaurant, man, you should have seen me working the room!Anyway, because I’m celebrating my 65th birthday this week and thus, according to the song, reaching the autumn of my years, I thought it would be interesting to compare the lyrics with the stages of my own life to date. So here goes with the first verse.When I was seventeen, it was a very good yearIt was a very good year for small town girlsAnd soft summer nightsWe'd hide from the lightsOn the village greenWhen I was seventeenNaw, not even close. When I was seventeen in 1967, I did live in a large village, but I spent my nights running a bar in one of its hotels. The bar was a magnet for both the matelots from the Naval base along the road and the local factory girls. It had a jukebox which played only the latest and best Sixties music. And it was the place to be on those soft summer nights. So, underage in charge of the top bar in the place and winching a twenty-five year-old waitress? Aye, no’ a bad year, I suppose.Don’t forget the chorus. I can recall/The thrill of it all… That’s it. Softly now. Good. And on to the second verse.When I was twenty-one, it was a very good yearIt was a very good year for city girlsWho lived up the stairsWith perfumed hairThat came undoneWhen I was twenty-oneQuite accurate, really. It was 1971 when I was twenty-one. Having left that matelot bar far behind, I did now work and live in the city. And the lassies did live up the stairs – in tenements of one sort or another. I rented my own poky wee flat in a tenement. I was broke and hungry a lot of the time, but I was independent, a freebird. That wasn’t to last, though, because I would meet and marry my first wife the following year. So, all things considered, 1971 was no’ a bad year either.Remember the chorus. I can recall… Yep, you’re getting the hang of it. Here’s verse three.When I was thirty-five, it was a very good yearIt was a very good year for blue-blooded girlsOf independent meansWe'd ride in limousinesTheir chauffeurs would driveWhen I was thirty-fiveTotally off the mark. When I was thirty-five in 1985, I was back in my home town, living on my own and drunk most nights. In The Percentages Men, my forthcoming semi-autobiographical novel, here’s how I describe the situation:

While Dan’s career at the SNHC was successful and stable at that time, the same could not be said of his private life. Less than a year earlier, the latter had changed irrevocably when his wife left him without warning, taking with her their three children, the youngest of whom was still a toddler. It transpired that throughout the whole of their twelve-year marriage she had been conducting an affair with an old school friend and had finally decided to go and live with him, her inducement to abandon the marriage after all those years being the imminent prospect of her secret lover inheriting a sizeable hotel business from his elderly parents. What followed for Dan was a period of utter misery, punctuated by bouts of rage, despair and drunkenness. But slowly, gradually, he emerged from the misery to put his world back in order. He found a solicitor, through whom divorce proceedings were put in motion, a sum of alimony was agreed and regular access to his children was arranged. Then he bought a flat – a bachelor pad – back in his home town, a few miles outside of Edinburgh. And he began to build a new social life – one that was centred on his local pub, but a social life nonetheless.

Nope, 1985 was not a good year.The chorus again, folks. Softly, softly. I can recall… And on to the final verse.But now the days are short, I'm in the autumn of my yearsAnd I think of my life as vintage wineFrom fine old kegsFrom the brim to the dregsIt poured sweet and clearIt was a very good yearThat’s one helluva leap from thirty-five to now, isn’t it? Thirty years of my life glossed over. Years in which I went into business on my own and then in partnership with those other Percentages Men. Years when I married again and travelled the world with my second wife. Years when my so-called business partners destroyed a successful company and almost destroyed me into the bargain. Years when I recovered my health and my brain and found I could write again and wrote and published books and made many virtual friends and founded websites and created this blog. Those years.So do I look back on those years and the earlier ones and think of my life as vintage wine that poured sweet and clear? Not really. But there were some damn good years in amongst them – a mess of good years, as Frank would sing. Vladimir Putin willing, there’ll be many more of the good ones to come.Okay, people, the final chorus. Very softly now. I can recall/The thrill of it all/Though it were yesterday And fade out.

About this time two years ago, I made a New Year’s Resolution. It was to extricate my books from the hands of my publishers and re-publish them myself, thus becoming a truly independent author and publisher. In a post entitled McPublish And Be Damned on this blog, I wrote:I’m looking forward to joining the growing ranks of those established and respected authors who have also had the courage to sever ties with their publishers and go completely “indie”. We’ll all be bravehearts together in the publishing revolution!I kept that resolution, of course, reclaiming and re-publishing my five books. And I went on to publish another seven. So now I have a dozen self-published books, comprising three biographies, three novels and six short story collections – all listed here on Amazon.Two years down the line, it’s probably a good time to review what I’ve managed to achieve in the brave new world of self-publishing. How have I fared as an indie publisher? What does my report card look like?Well, there’s the measurable stuff to begin with – the statistics. So far, almost 300 paperback copies of the books have been purchased, while worldwide paid Kindle downloads have exceeded 3,300. (The latter figure doesn’t include the many thousands of Kindle copies that have been downloaded for free during my frequent Free Book Promotion periods.) In total, therefore, there have been some 3,600 actual sales.Then there are the book reviews. To date, my self-published books have accumulated 88 reviews on Amazon UK (of which 78 are 4- or 5-star) and a further 61 on Amazon US (of which 52 are 4- or 5-star). And on Goodreads they’ve just notched up their 100th rating, with an average rating of 4+ stars.Now, because I have nothing to compare these figures against, I’m not sure what they signify. Is my self-publishing performance poor or average or even good? I don’t know.What I do know for sure is that every one of those sales and every one of those favourable reviews produced a little burst of joy for me. And I do know that I really like this self-publishing lark. Everything I need to price, promote and keep track of my books is at my fingertips, only a click or two away. Everything is under my complete control. And when it comes time to publish the great Scottish novel (next year, hopefully), I won’t have to wait in someone else’s queue, fit in with their priorities, put up with their excuses and (yes, sadly) even listen to their lies.In fact, I’m so confident about the self-publishing process that I’ve also been publishing books – a couple of dozen at the last count – on behalf of some of the regular contributors to the McStorytellers short story website. But that’s another topic altogether, which I’ll blog about in the New Year.Meanwhile, in keeping with the whole self-help ethos, I’d like to have a go at self-marking my report card. Not a bestselling author by any means, I think it should say, but moderately successful. Hasn’t quite got the hang of how to market his books effectively. Overall, could do better.Happy New Year everyone!

Since A Parcel of Rogues back in February, I’ve managed to write another handful of new short stories this year. As well as publishing the stories on McStorytellers, I’ve uploaded them on this site. But until now I’ve neglected to introduce them on The 4B’s Blog. So here at last is a bit of a catch-up.To begin with, there’s No’ on a Friday, the story of one particular office rule it’s always best to observe.Then there’s the tale of the chap who has been Summoned to The Tower – and it’s not to see the Queen!Eire’s troubled road to independence and its tendency to forget the past struggle are examined in Irish Riddles.With apologies to William Wordsworth, there’s a piece called A Host of Golden Geordie Lasses about the scene of an important business decision.And in Goaded By Nuns a new friendship is struck thanks to some aggressive counselling.As ever, all the stories are based on real events and real people; although in some cases the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Enjoy the read!

It was as long ago as September 2013, in a post entitled The First Blows, that I last blogged here about the progress of my next novel. At that time, I had the makings of a book cover (which I’ve since revised) and a blurb to accompany it. I had also devised a structure for the book and written the Prologue. These I called the first satisfying blows of an act of revenge against my so-called partners in the business I retired from. So where am I with the novel today, almost a year later? Well, I’m sorry to report that I’ve only added three Chapters. Including the Prologue, I’m now some 14,000 words in, with probably five or six times that amount still to go. And what, you may wonder, is the reason for such painfully slow progress? I could say that I’ve been busy with other things, which is partly true. Or I could say that I’ve been lacking inspiration, which is also partly true. But the overwhelming reason is neither of those; it’s because I’ve only been able to tackle the writing in fits and starts. Let me explain. Each time I begin to write, I also begin to remember. I remember the enormous stress caused to me by the devious, cowardly actions of my business partners. I remember the pain and fear of the near-fatal stroke that felled me and was a direct consequence of the stress. I remember the six weeks I spent in hospital recovering from the stroke. I remember learning to walk again and to pee standing up and to cross the road on my own. I remember the effort it needed to sit at my laptop without shaking and sweating. And I remember the many months it took me to regain the confidence to walk into a busy supermarket or restaurant or airport without thinking that the whole world was about to crash around me. I remember all of these things and I grow angry. To a writer, anger is a highly destructive beast. Write when you’re angry and you’ll exaggerate, you’ll skew meanings and you’ll omit key facts. I don’t want to write when I’m angry. I don’t want to exaggerate the failings of the characters, turning them into fictional monsters, who are caricatures and therefore not believable. I want my characters to be thinly disguised real people, real monsters. I want to capture every nuance of their speech and thoughts and deeds. And I want to get the details of time and place exactly right. Only when the story and the people in it reflect the truth (albeit a fictionalised truth for legal reasons) am I satisfied. So I stop writing when I become angry, only returning to the manuscript when I’m calmer and more able to continue objectively and clinically. Since that could be days, weeks, even months later, I’m now resigned to the prospect that this book will be a long time coming. But when it’s finished, which it will be, it will have been crafted accurately and meticulously in cold blood. The Mafia know all about that kind of approach. Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say. During the lengthy period it will take to prepare this particular dish, I’ll likely come back here from time to time to report progress and perhaps provide an excerpt or two. Here’s a wee introduction meantime. Meet Neville Brown, the money man. As the blurb explains, he’s a silver-tongued liar and an abject coward. You’ll gather that he also has an obsession.

Glasgow, 1989

Neville Brown stepped up to the front door of the office building, turned to take in the view of the park, glistening green in the early morning sunshine, and decided that life was good. The building was one of a sweeping terrace of Victorian townhouses built on the crest of the hill overlooking Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow’s West End. Neville’s company, Market Surveys Scotland, occupied its top floor and attic. He watched as his partner, Izzy, trudged up the steps towards him, a pile of folders under one arm and their two-year-old Yorkshire terrier nestled in the crook of the other. She was wearing an old denim jacket today over a floral dress that reached down to her ankles.Very fuckin’ Laura Ashley, Neville sneered to himself. He opened the plate glass door to let her into the office. “You go on up,” he said. “I’m enjoying the sun. It’s not often it shines in Glasgow, you know.” “Aye, okay, Nev,” Izzy sighed, stooping down to deposit the dog on the ground. The dog yelped and scampered up the stair. Izzy followed, her low-heeled, scuffed white shoes click-clacking as she ascended. “Mind now, Nev,” she called from the first landing, “Jimbo says he wants to see you this morning. Something urgent. He sounded fair harassed on the phone, so he did.” Neville grunted his acknowledgement. He watched Izzy’s progress for a few moments longer before letting go of the door. Then, shaking his head, he turned to face the park and the sun again. He really wished that Izzy would tidy herself up before coming to the office. He had complained to her countless times about her appearance, but she always said she was too busy pandering to him to bother about herself. All he wanted was a bit of cooked breakfast in the morning. How fuckin’ hard was that? His Ma used to do it every day for his Da and him – and she never once looked as dowdy and unkempt.Dowdy and unkempt, he repeated the words to himself. Yes, good words to describe Izzy. Jeez, you’d think she’d slept in that frock she’s wearing. The hair looks greasy as well. I’ll bet it hasn’t seen a brush today. And it’s more dirty brown than blonde these days. Yes, my dear, the fuckin’ roots need doing again! Making a mental note to speak to Izzy that night about her roots, Neville closed his eyes and let the sun’s rays wash over his face. He tried to think about work, about the tasks he needed to accomplish that day, but, as usual, his mind was wandering. His thoughts had progressed from the specific topic of Izzy’s appearance to the subject of women in general – his favourite subject, in fact. He wondered why it was that all the women in Belfast wanted to dye their hair blonde. It had gotten so that you never knew the true colour of their hair until their knickers were off. Even the Taig women were at it. His mind was off again. Aye, there’s me turned thirty now and I’ve yet to shag a Taig. And it’s not been for the want of trying. The Neville Brown charm doesn’t seem to impress that lot. But maybe one day. I’d love to fuck a red-haired one, so I would. The skin so pale you can see through it. Freckles everywhere. And that red bush. The fiery bush, just like in the Bible...

I’ve never been very good with my hands around the house. I suppose that failing stems from my time at secondary school. While I was immersed in namby-pamby academic stuff, like reading poetry and studying Latin, many of my peers were attending woodwork and metalwork classes and learning to be real men, the type who could come home from a day’s work, roll up their sleeves and knock up a set of shelves without pausing to even fart. After school, I worked in a succession of jobs that required me to use my head rather than my hands. And I ended up spending most of my life in business – the suit-shirt-and-tie-wearing sort of business. Then when I retired, when I had the opportunity at last to get to grips with the mysteries of DIY, I entered instead into that other Nancy Boy occupation – writing. So, yes, I’m very limited in what I can do to fix things. I can manage to change the fuse in a plug, and that’s about it. Most of the DIY jobs are left to my wife, who is a dab hand at that whirring drilly thing that frightens the life out of me, and who knows all about drill bits and rawlplugs and the like. But there are some jobs that are even beyond her – and that’s when we have to call in the dreaded tradesmen. Now you may think that because I don’t possess any of my own I live in awe of the skills of tradesmen. You may also wonder if I have some sort of inferiority complex when it comes to the manliness and overall handiness of those demigods. Well, I don’t in both cases. You see, over the years I’ve had many opportunities to study their habits, David Attenborough-like, and hence to recognise their faults. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll list a few of those faults here. To begin with, there’s their insistence on arriving at your home to start work at eight o’clock in the morning (or earlier if they can get away with it). You might be fooled into thinking that they are extremely busy men who need such an early start so that they can put in a full day’s work. Wrong. They want to start early so that they can also finish early, preferably by about two o’ clock, and have the rest of the day to themselves on the golf course (if the weather is good) or at home watching sport on the telly (if it’s not). It doesn’t matter if you would prefer more time to wash, dress and eat breakfast before they arrive; the early start is for their convenience, not yours. Then there are the breaks they take. At precisely ten o’clock, no matter what state the job is in, tools are downed and they’re off out to the nearest Greggs or equivalent for something hot, which they’ll usually eat leisurely in their vans while reading the paper and listening to the radio (at full blast, of course). They’ll be back on the job at half-past ten or thereabouts. And they’ll repeat the process two hours later for their lunchtime break. By the way, once the breaks are taken into account, a full day’s work for them turns out to last no more than five hours. By the way, too, you’re paying for that hour or so they spend eating and relaxing. And not forgetting the holidays. Most tradesmen I’ve come across are self-employed. You would think that would mean a flexible approach to the days they work. Aye, right. They never don the overalls at the weekend, naturally. And they take every holiday going – the trades’ fortnight, it goes without saying; a week or more at Easter; a fortnight or more over Christmas and New Year; every Bank Holiday weekend; and every local public holiday. Notwithstanding how urgent the job they’ve agreed to undertake, weekends and holidays always take precedence. You may believe by now that I’m being unduly harsh on those poor tradesmen. Up until a year ago, I would probably have agreed with you. But a year ago my wife and I were in the throes of having an old, dilapidated house (which is currently our home) renovated, and we had to rely on a whole army of roofers, plumbers, electricians, joiners, builders, plasterers and tilers to carry out the renovation work. Some of that experience was good – we are delighted to call one or two of the aforementioned our friends today – but most of it was bad. During the process, we discovered another major fault of many tradesmen, the biggest of all. It’s called greed and it works like this. They agree to carry out a piece of work by a set time. They are fully aware that they already have other work on the go which needs to be completed within the same timescale, but that knowledge doesn’t prevent them from taking on even more work and giving out even more promises. Then they spend their weeks juggling between jobs – spending a day on one, a couple of days on another, giving out this excuse here and that excuse there. And all the time they continue to work only five-hour days; they take their full breaks in the morning and at lunchtime; they refuse to come out at weekends; and they halt work for every holiday the calendar sends. Every job will finish late. Every customer will be dissatisfied. But so what? Once the work is in the bag, it’s like money in the bank, sucker! Yep, no’ a bad wee life if you can get it. Our experience of the greed factor caused my wife and I a great deal of frustration and anger. But it also supplied me with the inspiration for my latest short story. The story is called A Parcel of Rogues, it’s true for the most part (although the names have been changed to protect the guilty) and you can read it on McStorytellers. So why not nip over there now and meet Deke the Weasel, Fat Tony and Zebedee, the contractors from hell? By the way, if you haven’t already recognised it, the picture at the top of this post is a still from the Dire Strait’s video of Money For Nothing. Just sayin’.

On my McVoices Blog way back at the end of May, in a post entitled Time For Revenge, I announced that my next novel would be an exposé of the business I had spent some twenty years working in. And it would be written as an act of revenge against my so-called partners in that business. Well, the wheels of revenge do grind rather slowly, but I’m happy to report that almost four months later there has been some progress. As the picture above indicates, I now have the makings of a book cover. And here’s the likely blurb to accompany it:“THE PERCENTAGES MEN chronicles the rise and fall of a fictional market research agency based in the good City of Glasgow.Its central characters include a trio of the agency's directors. One is an alternately charming and frightening sociopath. One is a megalomaniac, a Scot with a Presbyterian work ethic, but with no morals to match. And the third is the money man, a silver-tongued liar and an abject coward.Into this mix comes a thinker, a tough, intelligent workaholic whose ideas and drive will propel the company to success.They are the Percentages Men. Percentages are their stock-in-trade, their commodity. They'll use percentages to change the face of Blair's New Britain. And to make themselves rich. Until greed and jealousy tear them apart. Until the implosion.” But there’s more. The book has a structure. And it has a Prologue. Funnily enough, the Prologue takes place, not in Scotland, but in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Here’s how it begins. (If you’d like to read the rest of it, go to McStorytellers, where it has been published as a short story called The Matchless.)“Morocco, 2003When he opened his eyes again and saw that the desert sky had turned purple, Jimbo knew for certain he would die soon. There would be no last-minute rescue; no miracle. Spread-eagled, unable to move, his blood seeping into the sand beneath him, his life ebbing away, he knew he would take his last breath out there, alone in that vastness, a speck in the Sahara.As the night grew blacker, stars began to appear – a few at first, then thousands more all at once, then many thousands more until the sky resembled a giant Star Wars screen, flickering and glistening, lighting up the desert floor, zooming down to meet him. The stars were so close now that if he had been able to raise an arm he could have reached up and touched the nearest one.In the starlight, Jimbo could make out objects lying in the sand on either side of him...” So that’s it. The first satisfying blows of revenge have been struck. And there’s much more to come. By the way, in the book all characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental. Aye, I would say that, wouldn’t I?